April 12, 2025 at 10:51 AM EDT
All the Shakespearean references in The White Lotus explained by an expert

Warning: this article contains major spoilers for the ending of White Lotus season three. "Is this a bit 'You killed my father, prepare to die,' kind of?" asks Chelsea, the horoscope-obsessed Brit played with charm by Aimee Lou Wood in season three of The White Lotus.

April 12, 2025 at 6:13 AM EDT
'People would die': Trump is jeopardizing 'important' funding as summer approaches

The summer of 2021 was brutal for residents of the Pacific Northwest. Cities across the region from Portland, Oregon, to Quillayute, Washington, broke temperature records by several degrees. In Washington, as the searing heat wave settled over the state, 125 people died from heat-related illnesses such as strokes and heart attacks, making it the deadliest weather event in the state's history. "This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here."

April 12, 2025 at 5:51 AM EDT
Trump is drinking his own Kool-Aid as evidence of his dementia grows

Trump didn't just end his ill-conceived tariff drama, he only postponed it. Again. It's not good news, it's just delayed news. Economists know that the best conduit to a healthy economy is stability . Yet the only reliable commodity from the Trump administration to date has been instability. In under three months of Trump's second term, the chaos has been so relentless that even Fox News propagandists have, at times, fumbled their spin.

April 11, 2025 at 10:30 PM EDT
Everything Trump is doing makes perfect sense if you understand one simple fact

Everything Donald Trump is doing and will do makes perfect and sudden sense if you understand one simple fact: For him, it's all a show. He views the White House as a sound stage, like the set made to look like a boardroom where he performed for NBC on The Apprentice . He sees the people around him as a supporting cast, who can each be easily and quickly replaced (and often are) if they fail to play their roles the way he thinks will work best for the program.

April 11, 2025 at 10:29 PM EDT
Trump's latest change to Social Security 'going to end in checks not going out': advocate

On Friday, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that it was cutting communications staff at its regional offices and moving all official communications to X -- which is owned by South African centibillionaire Elon Musk. Musk is also the founder of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has, with President Donald Trump's blessing, made deep cuts to multiple federal agencies and fired thousands of federal workers.

April 11, 2025 at 9:23 PM EDT
'The Southern border is under attack': Trump orders US military to take over strip of land

President Donald Trump is authorizing the U.S. military to take jurisdiction over federal lands along the southern border to help enforce his immigration agenda. On Friday, Trump issued a memorandum entitled "Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions" to the secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security, reports USA Today.

April 11, 2025 at 8:17 PM EDT
Ex-Blackwater CEO's new pitch for Trump 'could be a precursor to deporting US citizens'

Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and defense contractors are aiming to cash in on deportations to a Central American prison/holding facility. Prince -- the brother of President Donald Trump's former education secretary, Betsy DeVos -- hopes his proposal can skirt U.S. immigration laws by designating a section of a sprawling El Salvadoran prison as American territory, Politico reported. Proposed new language claiming "transferring a prisoner to such a facility would not be an Extradition nor a Deportation" raises the specter of deporting U.S. citizens to offsite facilities because "deportation" may only qualify as a "transfer." Politico's Dasha Burns and Myah Ward noted that Prince's proposal "could be a precursor to deporting U.S. citizens" even though the facility is initially only for holding undocumented immigrants.

April 11, 2025 at 8:00 PM EDT
'Pawns in Trump's game': Ex-US attorney reveals key reason law firms are being targeted

President Donald Trump has been lately focused on bringing some of the nation's biggest law firms to heel, with many deciding to accommodate the White House rather than fight back. But according to one legal veteran, they be unwitting accomplices toward helping Trump accomplish a larger goal. Trump has signed a multitude of executive orders blacklisting multiple law firms known for representing Trump's political opponents to be blacklisted by the federal government. Under the orders, attorneys who work at the firms in question can be stripped of their security clearances and banned from entering federal buildings, while the firms themselves can have their existing contracts terminated while federal agencies are prohibited from entering into any further contracts with them. Some law firms have cut deals with Trump to provide millions of dollars in free work in exchange for no longer being in his crosshairs, while others have fought back.

April 11, 2025 at 5:55 PM EDT
Trump admin keeps Hitler's memoir on Naval Academy library shelves -- but bans Maya Angelou

After he was sworn in as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. Naval Academy to end diversity practices in admissions and in its circulation of the approximately 600,000 titles available in the academy's Nimitz Library. On Friday, the New York Times found that the result of that policy has been the wholesale removal of books by authors from diverse backgrounds, while keeping books promoting racism and white supremacy on the shelves. Among the books banned include "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, the 2010 book "Memorializing the Holocaust" (about how female Holocaust victims are remembered) and a critique of the book "The Bell Curve," which argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than whites.

April 11, 2025 at 5:34 PM EDT
'Apocalyptic': Trump admin now 'taking a broad ax' to this agency's 'life-saving' work

President Donald Trump's proposed 2026 budget reportedly seeks to effectively dismantle the scientific research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shut down critical weather laboratories, and slash the agency's budget by more than 25 percent. NOAA serves as the primary source of weather forecasting in the United States and is a vital contributor to global forecasting efforts. SCIENCE, the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says that it has seen an internal document, and reports that the administration's goal is to end climate research at NOAA.

April 11, 2025 at 4:17 PM EDT
'Scared for my friends': Scientists fearing retaliation from Trump abruptly withdraw study

Co-authors working on a scientific paper abruptly pulled its publication because it was a paper on evolution -- and feared retaliation from President Donald Trump's administration. The paper "was months of work, but at the same time I know the current situation, and I'm scared for my friends in the U.S.," said a European evolutionary biologist speaking anonymously for fear if retaliation. "I told them, 'If you think it is too dangerous, don't do it.'"

April 11, 2025 at 4:03 PM EDT
'Please make a deal': Trump-voting farmer says he 'feels the pain' from trade war

A soybean farmer from Kentucky is now pleading with President Donald Trump to make the first move to end the rapidly escalating trade war with China before his farm is wiped out. Newsweek reported that Caleb Ragland, who is president of the American Soybean Association, recently wrote an essay published in conservative journalist Bari Weiss' The Free Press about how the new import taxes Trump imposed on China are affecting his business. He pointed out that because tariffs on China have skyrocketed, his farm will likely go under by 2027 if current trade duties stay constant.